
Mommy had this reeeeally REALLY bad scare a few days ago, an' so we told her she could borrow our blog.

Yeah!
I did it cuz I's so nice. Faraday did it cuz Allie was gonna whup his behind if he didn't let her (she's GINORMOUS, you know! *wide eyed look*).

BRATS! Don't make me come over there and pink-slap you! You won't LIKE it if I chip a nail ... *warning look* Besides, I've been delicate lately, so BE NICE!!!
Uh, thanks guys. I think. Living with three cats that have such strong personalities (two, actually-Maxie's so mellow, he'd get along with anyone!) is a never ending source of entertainment for Marty and me. They're our babies, which is why last Friday's news was such a shock to us.
Here's what happened:
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I've been traveling a lot lately - in fact I've been in 9 states in just over 6 weeks. My most recent trip overlapped with Marty's travels so we hired a cat sitter to come in and care for our fur-kids. I know any disruption in routine has the potential to affect these guys, so when we returned and noticed Allie coughing we decided to give it a day or two and observe. Was it just a bad hairball? Maybe an upper respiratory infection (URI)?

A few days passed and she was still coughing, so Friday we decided I should take her in for an exam.
What happened sent me into the weekend reeling in shock, combing the internet for answers.
Allie didn't
have a URI, our vet didn't think.
Her lungs sounded clear and she
wasn't running a fever. No passageway obstruction, he said. But she had
lost weight. Did we have her on a diet? No-o-o-ooo ....
Then he dropped the bombshell on me: "I want to test her for heartworms."
Heartworms?
My little gray Waif? My husband's very own Daddy's Girl? Allie of the pink mani/pedi and cute girlie manners, has heartworms?
Dogs have heartworms, not cats! Parvo, distemper, heartworms - these are canine diseases. Feline leukemia, FIP, panleukopenia - now those are the things you worry about in cats, not heartworms. Right?

Wrong.
Though cats are not natural hosts, they can be infected, and the number
has increased to the point that our family vet has seen more heartworm
disease in
cats in the past year than he has in dogs. Wow.
Okay, so we do the blood test, then we treat her. Sorry, no go, he said. There is no US-approved heartworm treatment for cats.
Studies indicate that the same form of treatment used in dogs would
cause about a 70% fatality in cats. You do what you can to alleviate the
symptoms and then you wait it out until the worm dies - in 2 or 3
years.
I left the clinic feeling like an absolutely horrible parent. This
was preventable but no one had ever told me about it, so Allie had never
been given an easily applied, monthly heartworm preventive.
We drove home, me frantically dialing my husband to tell him the
(potentially) bad news, and the minute I hit the door, I started
googling.

My first thoughts were, 'but...she's an
indoor cat!" Well, okay,
mostly indoor. She's only outside for limited periods under our strict
supervision. Turns out it didn't matter.
As many indoor cats have been diagnosed as outdoor cats. When I
mentioned this to a vet tech at the shelter where I volunteer, she just
shook her head and said, "It only takes one mosquito. And how often do
you see one of those in your house over the summer?"
Oh, and it wouldn't have mattered if I'd learned about this a month or
two ago and started her on the preventive. The average time it takes,
from when the mosquito infects the cat to when the parasites settle into
the blood vessels of the lungs and start causing distress is about
eight months.
So if Allie has heartworms, she would have been infected
by a mosquito bite last October.
All that time, those nasty little buggers are setting up shop in your precious baby's lungs. And they're growing.
The American Heartworm Society states that there are two times when an infected cat is most at risk: when the worms begin to mature and at their death. At these times, they can cause acute inflammation and significant lung damage.
Our vet told us that it can be very hard to diagnose heartworms in a cat (also called HARD, or
Heartworm Associated Respiratory Disease).
With a cat, there has to be a body of evidence and diagnosis can be tricky. The initial phase is often misdiagnosed as asthma or allergic bronchitis, as symptoms mainly include coughing, asthma-like wheezing, lethargy and weight loss.

Check, check, and check. No wonder he wanted to test Allie - she had all the symptoms.
Some infected cats have such severe pulmonary issues that they require
oxygen therapy and asthma medications like inhalers (the only source of
humor that weekend came from envisioning me holding an inhaler up to
Allie's mouth and saying, "okay, now, BREATHE!" Um, not so much....).
Oh, and there's this other little thing.... When the worms die, they
shed proteins that can shock your kitty's system into heart failure.
In all, a
very scary disease - which Allie fortunately did not have.
We heaved
huge sighs of relief when the antibody test came back negative on Monday
and shortly after, Allie's coughs eased and she was her perky self
again.
We got lucky. Allie only had a mild URI.
But I slapped a tube of Revolution heartworm medicine on the backs of all three kitties' necks so fast they didn't know what hit them. I'd been scared enough.
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(There are currently four heartworm preventive products available in the US: two oral and two topical. All require a prescription from your vet but can be purchased from an online pet pharmacy at a discount. WARNING: don't ever give your cat any heartworm product meant for dogs, as this can kill a cat! )